MAGA moans that America is becoming a country of girly men. Virility is out of vogue. Feminism has emasculated men. And there are too many light-in-the-loafers metrosexuals, quiche eaters, and philosophy majors. They pine for the atavistic days of the trad-wife and spousal rape.
Women might be vital for procreation. But the affairs of state and commerce should be left to the people God had best equipped for the task — men. This elevated status for males is hardly unique to American conservatives.
Traditional cultures valued boys over girls. But until recently, there wasn't much parents could do about the sex of their offspring. If they suffered the birth of a daughter, their only redress was to keep trying for a son. Then, technology changed the game.
Developments in ultrasound that allowed prospective parents to know a fetus's sex led to an increase in abortions (legal and illegal) of females. This gender preference was particularly pronounced in China. That country's one-child law drove many couples to ensure that the child was a boy.
Boys were considered an economic plus. In comparison, prospective parents saw girls as a drain on the family's resources. In addition, boys tended to stay with their parents and support them in their old age, whereas girls often joined their husbands' families. Pew Research summed it up thus:
In South Asia and East Asia, a widespread preference for sons, coupled with sex-selective abortions, is the cause of unnatural sex ratios at birth. Some scholars have noted that countries with heavy imbalances generally meet three preconditions: a widespread desire for sons and/or aversion to daughters; parents seeking to have smaller families; and the availability of prenatal sex detection (typically, ultrasound technology) and abortion services.11
In China, the government's decades-long enforcement of a one-child policy starting in 1980 and the spread of ultrasound technology led to a sharp increase in sex-selective abortions at the end of the last century.
The natural sex ratio for newborns is 105 boys for every 100 girls. This arrangement works well because boys and young men are more likely to die before procreating than girls and young women.
In China, the ratio reached 115 to 100. In India, which had no legal restriction on the number of children, economic calculation led to a ratio of 110 to 100.
But times have changed. Girls are no longer a curse. And in some places, including America (despite MAGA wailing), they are preferred.
The Economist reports that gender reveal parties heralding the arrival of a boy are not always an unadulterated joy.
But festivities that end in disappointment for the unsuspecting #boymom and pity from those attending have spawned a whole new genre on social media, "gender disappointment" videos, some of which attract millions of views. Countless posts show or describe "feeling sad you aren't having a little girl".
In 1990, the birth ratio in South Korea was 116 to 100. Now, it is close to the natural rate. Even in countries that still favor boys over girls, the ratio is declining. The Economist reports:
Critically, the desire for sons has also diminished rapidly in China and India, although the sex ratio at birth remains skewed in both countries. In China it has fallen from a peak of 117 for most of the 2000s to 111 in 2023. In India the rate was 107 that year, down from 109 in 2010.
Among developed countries South Korea is not alone. The report adds:
In the rich world, in the meantime, evidence is growing of an emerging preference for girls. Between 1985 and 2003, the share of South Korean women who felt it "necessary" to have a son plunged from 48% to 6%, according to South Korea's statistics agency. Nearly half now want daughters.
Similarly in Japan, polls suggest a clear preference for girls. The Japanese National Fertility Survey, a poll conducted every five years, shows that in 1982, 48.5% of married couples wanting only one child said they would prefer a daughter. By 2002, 75% did. A similar swing existed for parents wanting two or three children.
The reproductive decisions of people who already have children show parents' gender preferences. In the US, that preference has shifted to girls. The report explains:
In America parents with only daughters were once more likely than parents with only sons to keep having children, presumably to try for a boy. That was the thesis set out in a study published in 2008 by Gordon Dahl of the University of California, San Diego, and Enrico Moretti at the University of California, Berkeley. The report, which analysed census data from 1960 to 2000, concluded that parents in America favoured sons.
That preference has since reversed, however. A study in 2017 led by Francine Blau, an economist at Cornell University, found that having a girl first is now associated with lower fertility rates in America. The research, which uses data from 2008 to 2013, suggested a preference for girls among married couples.
This preference is also seen in parents who need medical assistance in conceiving.
Fertility treatment provides further evidence of a bias towards girls. At New York City IVF, a clinic in Midtown Manhattan, parents pay as much as $20,000 to select the sex of babies conceived through in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). Wealthy families travel from countries like Britain, where the practice is banned. "In the past, it was all about boys," says Alyaa Elassar, who leads the practice. But increasingly, parents opt for baby girls.
And among those with non-biological children.
Adoptive parents, too, tend to want girls. Those in America were willing to pay as much as $16,000 to secure a daughter, according to a study published in 2010. In 2009 Abbie Goldberg of Clark University asked more than 200 American couples hoping to adopt whether they wanted a boy or a girl. Although many of them said they did not mind, heterosexual men and women and lesbians all leaned on average towards girls; only gay men preferred boys.
Sociology is a soft science. So, the reasons for this preference change are speculative. However, one theory is that many parents no longer subscribe to a boys-will-be-boys dismissal of antisocial behavior in young males.
If this analysis has merit, then the Conservatives whining about manhood in the US should stop backing Trump and other rapists and misogynists. They should condemn the mostly male Jan 6 rioters. They should disown the Andrew Tates. And they should speak up against the manosphere podcast "bros" celebrating MMA-style masculinity
I have nothing against men — I am one. But let's raise our boys not to be assholes.
